Today was our first official day touring in Rome. We first met our tour guide, Jill, at the “Wedding Cake” building. It turns out that everyone in Rome hates it, surprisingly – it’s too white. I thought that it was a nice building, but when I looked around I could see what local Italians meant. All of the buildings in Rome are made from marble and have a creamier coloring to them, whereas the “Wedding Cake” building is practically pure white, and in the shape of a wedding cake, hence its name.

After we learned about the “Wedding Cake”, we walked to the Roman Forum. I was amazed at how much was simply in that park. But, as we learned, if you dig anywhere in Italy you’re going to find history. One of the places that we stopped at was the temple of the Vestal Virgins. Vesta was a Roman goddess who had a group of virgins who would serve her for 30 years. She had a garden where there were statues of these Virgins, but none of their heads had survived through the years.

The most exciting place that we visited was the Coliseum. I really have no words to describe it. You see all the pictures online and the recreations of it in the movies, but nothing really measures up to actually seeing it in real life. All I could do the entire time was just look around. It’s really amazing how it’s been preserved. Yes, people had taken it apart in the past and used it for other projects, but still so much of it stands without much of it’s support system. It goes to show how the genius of the Romans.